Blackouts adding to misery

Rolling blackouts adding to the misery

Published 5:30 am, Wednesday, September 28, 2005

The hum of power generators echoed through the normally quiet Grogan's Mill neighborhood in The Woodlands for a second day as Entergy rationed power to customers through rolling blackouts.

The outages were a hot and frustrating inconvenience for 142,000 homes and businesses across Montgomery, Liberty, Grimes and Walker counties, but thousands more Entergy-connected customers in East Texas remained powerless.

On Tuesday morning, all 29,000 Jasper-Newton customers were still out of power. The majority of Sam Houston's customers — about 54,000 — also remained in the dark.

With thousands of wooden and metal power poles down and hundreds of miles of wires on the ground, those cooperatives estimate it could take an entire month to bring every customer back online.

But Entergy, TXU, CenterPoint and the cooperatives say they are working as fast as they can to bring pockets of homes and businesses back online.

Even so, Entergy's estimates are that it will take weeks to bring all of its customers back, said spokesman Morgan Stewart.

Thousands without power

CenterPoint Energy's Conroe-to-Galveston service area still had 70,000 customers without power late Tuesday afternoon. Dallas-based TXU had fewer than 30,000 customers down.

TXU said its immediate focus is to bring Lufkin and Nacogdoches back. Both TXU and CenterPoint are targeting Friday to have electricity restored.

The Sam Houston Electric Cooperative started switching the power on wherever it could as soon as Hurricane Rita's winds started dying down Saturday.

Parts of Huntsville, Shepherd and Coldspring have power, with more reconnected every day, said spokesman Keith Stapleton.

The Sam Houston cooperative operates in 10 counties, and according to Stapleton, the area west of U.S. 59 sustained much less damage than the area to the east. Polk, Tyler, Hardin and Liberty counties were the hardest-hit in the Sam Houston system.

More than 3,000 poles and almost a thousand miles of transmission lines are broken or buried under pine trees, but a thousand linemen and tree trimmers have been brought in from across the country to fix the system, Stapleton said. Three tent cities are being set up in Woodville, Livingston and just east of Cleveland to house the workers.

Five-hour blackout

Connie Schied
, who lives on a marina in Riverside between Huntsville and Trinity, had a five-hour blackout in the heat of the day. Entergy customer-service agents could not give her a timeline for when the power would be turned back on.

The company initially announced rolling blackouts would last "60 minutes," but communities throughout the utility's service area were blacked out for hours at a time.

"Energy is not a luxury. It's a necessity of life. People are furious. They're liars," Schied said.

Dennis Malcolm, who lives in Grogan's Mill, said his neighborhood had a 3 1/2 -hour blackout Sunday, a six-hour blackout Monday and another began Tuesday afternoon just as temperatures climbed to the day's highs.

His family copes by keeping the windows closed, turning down the thermostat while the air conditioner is running and trying not to move around too much.

Only 3 plants running

Entergy's Stewart said cranking up the air when power is on is part of the problem. With only three of Entergy's 13 power plants running and another 275 substations knocked out, there's simply not enough power to meet demand, he said.

"Until there's less load there will be pressure on the system," Stewart said.

Montgomery Independent School District will resume classes Wednesday and plans to cool buildings at night to offset power outages during the day.

Conroe ISD plans to resume school Wednesday in part because of Entergy's assurance that blackouts won't last long, said Kay Galindo, a district spokeswoman.

Magnolia ISD classes started Tuesday, and Superintendent Michael Holland said the power stayed on the whole time.

More than 10,000 at work

Entergy has more than 10,000 transmission linemen and tree trimmers — some trucked in from Missouri, Virginia and Florida — working to clear rights of way and repair downed power lines.

Entergy is prioritizing getting power to hospitals, police and fire departments, and other essential services including refineries.

Nancy Petrus said many Conroe-area homes rely on private water wells pumped by electricity. She's also concerned the heat and humidity could cause mold.

"There are a lot of people out here in trailers that are just frying," she said.

Fritz Guthrie of the Conroe Regional Medical Center, the largest hospital in the area, said the emergency room is running 20 to 25 percent above capacity. Half the people being treated aren't even from Montgomery County.

Guthrie said Entergy has assured him the hospital will not have blackouts but promised warning if their part of the grid has to go down.

"The heat is just a real killer right now, literally and figuratively," Guthrie said.